Canvas
by Shrrgnien
Summary: She will bear this bruise, and many others; marks of ownership, marks of the Empire's power that the galaxy dare not leave on her mistress, marks of change and struggle that Padmé will never show. And before long, Padmé knows, she will be grateful for the honor. (Dark AU.)


**TW:** Torture, slavery, Darth Padmé Is Unstable And Creepy, dubcon elements. There's no rape (or sex at all) that takes place here, but there are enough nonconsensual elements that I feel the warning is necessary.

* * *

"Will you have need of me again, my lady?"

The girl's voice is barely a whisper.

A languid pause, and her mistress raises a hand and flicks her fingers in dismissal. Her eyes are closed, but the silent attendants scattered throughout the room bow anyway before retreating. Almost all of them make it before their mistress interrupts. She doesn't bother opening her eyes.

"Not you."

None of them need to ask for clarification. They all know what that means.

After an agonized pause, Sabé steps back from the group. Slowly, as if pulled against her will, she crosses back and drops to her knees, head bowed, beside her lady. The door closes quietly. Several long minutes pass in silence.

Finally, Padmé opens her eyes.

She doesn't look at Sabé; doesn't acknowledge her presence, except to briefly run the backs of her fingers down her attendant's cheek without so much as glancing down at her. She takes her time pouring herself a glass of wine from the decanter one of her girls has left on her coffee table, takes her time settling back into the couch, takes her time enjoying her drink.

She would have to be much more foolish than she is not to know the effect it has on her waiting attendant. She would have to be much weaker than she has ever been not to embrace it. Not to _use_ it.

She lets Sabé kneel and wait until just when she can feel the girl's attention beginning to wander, her focus slip for a moment. Then she reaches down and flicks the wide hood out of her way.

Sabé looks up reflexively, and Padmé smiles at her.

"How are you settling in?" she asks, conversational and light, one finger tracing the lip of her glass. Sabé's eyes lower again. Good. She's learning already, even if she's not consciously aware of it. Padmé purrs inwardly. She's proud of her; someone so alike to herself, she thinks, could hardly be anything but a quick study. Sabé has always been intelligent. She wouldn't bother with her, otherwise.

"I am." Sabé's voice is rough, and she clears her throat with difficulty. "I am... settling. My lady."

Padmé doesn't miss the tiny, almost invisible cringe at the title. At the lie. She doesn't resent it. She just pities Sabé's confusion, her reluctance to embrace change. The downside, she supposes, of her favorite's determination. Some might say stubbornness, but Padmé knows her better.

"So I see," she says quietly. Sabé keeps her eyes on her knees, and doesn't move. After a moment, Padmé sighs and releases her with the wave of a hand.

Sabé stands and bows hurriedly, wearing an expression of abject relief. Padmé allows her the moment of delusion for all of two steps toward the door.

"Sabé."

Sabé stumbles and looks back at her, uncomprehending.

Padmé raises an eyebrow. "I haven't dismissed you."

And there is the mask. Sabé's bow is carefully measured this time, her murmured "Of course, my lady" flat. Padmé will allow it, for now. Eventually her fondness for the girl will not be enough to overlook such obvious reluctance in her service; but she has barely been returned to her lady's fold a month. For such vibrant, strong-willed creatures as themselves, time can be allowed for a period of adjustment. Sabé will find her place soon.

For now, her place is tucked into a shadowy alcove nearby, hood pulled around her face and hands at her sides. Padmé pities her more than ever as she tries to shrink into the shadows, to hide as if Padmé will forget about her. It's an impossible task.

They stand out, the two of them. Draw the eye, no matter what their surroundings. It is, perhaps, the surest definition of beauty.

Once, she would have let Sabé think it was working. Padmé knows how it relaxes her favorite sometimes, to feel as if she is safely invisible in this new world that makes her so unsure of herself. But Sabé cannot hide forever. Padmé never takes her eyes off her as she finishes her wine; after the first minute or so, she can see the slowly rising tension along her attendant's frame, the twitching of her fingers and tightening of her jaw. Sabé's breath is coming faster and shallower than usual as she tries desperately to pretend her mistress isn't watching her.

This is a good vintage, Padmé thinks idly; her husband knows less than nothing about wine, she's personally never had the patience for the pretension surrounding the culture, but Emperor Palpatine has yet to steer them wrong. She'll have to thank him; the bottle had been a gift.

Still. She sets her glass aside and presses a button on the side of the table; a panel slides open and lowers the decanter into a climate-controlled storage compartment. A bit dry for her tastes at the moment. It begs to be chased with something sweet.

Sabé doesn't visibly react as Padmé stands, but her control falters when her lady gets too close; she ducks her head, presses further into the alcove. Padmé shakes her head indulgently. There's no need for her to be afraid; not yet. She tips her attendant's chin up to kiss her. It's brief, an almost gentle press of her lips. Then, equally tender, she tilts Sabé's head to the side and sinks her teeth into the girl's throat.

Sabé goes rigid, and even with just the faintest brush of her fingers over her attendant's hands Padmé can feel how hard her fists are clenched; but she doesn't try to escape, doesn't push her away. She never has; proof enough, in Padmé's eyes, that there is hope for her. Padmé keeps pushing, even bites down a little harder until she finally gets a reaction—a faint whimpering noise, more of pain than pleasure. But it's a start. A break to the mask.

She lessens the pressure immediately; she's not here to hurt her lovely girl, after all. She kisses the spot, runs a comforting thumb over the back of one tight-clenched fist as she takes her teeth out of the equation. The raw bite is soothed with long, slow passes of her tongue; Padmé mouths teasingly at the delicate skin where Sabé's throat meets her jaw, nips at it for a moment before returning to her place. Sabé stiffens again; her pulse thunders under Padmé's lips, and she sucks just hard enough to make her attendant's breath stutter painfully.

This is what they will never understand, why she was so insistent on Sabé's presence. Sabé is more than the graceful but dangerous servant whose life Anakin was wary of sparing; she is infinitely more than the plaything the Emperor thought he was granting her. Anakin saw mercy in her request for the girl's life, Palpatine saw the desire for a trophy, and both were mistaken. Sabé is not, and has never been, her mirror image. She is not even Padmé's foil. She is her truest and best reflection.

To the Empire, the Lady Padmé Amidala is untouchable. Distant, silent, unknowable—a mystery and a myth. Palpatine leaves her to Anakin, as he had once promised a young Jedi; and Anakin refuses to mark her, refuses to touch her with anything but gentleness even at his darkest and most furious. Even Sabé, when they were young and foolish, would not mar what she had then viewed as perfection. It is a heady thing, the knowledge of her own image, of the _immortality_ of that image. But all power comes with a price; hers is that she must always be static, her status as a symbol meaning her identity can never alter or evolve. She is the most powerful woman in the galaxy; there is no mobility from here. No change.

But _Sabé_. Sabé is a blank template, an empty canvas waiting to be given purpose. Sabé has no identity in this world, not yet. Sabé is bursting with life and possibilities. And Sabé is _hers_.

She will bear this bruise, and many others; marks of ownership, marks of the Empire's power that the galaxy dare not leave on her mistress, marks of change and struggle that Padmé will never show. Sabé will bear the marks as Padmé bears the responsibilities, and they will heal, and she will be stronger for them. And before long, Padmé knows, she will be grateful for the honor.

Padmé lingers at her attendant's abused neck for a long moment, savoring the taste of salt and skin before she finally pulls away with a satisfied hum. She stays close, but doesn't touch the girl again.

"Sabé," she says quietly. The same words, the same offer, that she has given at least twice a week since Sabé was released into her custody. Sabé goes tense again in recognition. "I want you to come to bed with me."

Sabé swallows.

"No," she says simply.

Padmé sighs. "Exetor."

XE-24, the sleek, boxlike security droid in the corner, wakes with a whirring noise. Sabé braces herself against the back of the alcove with a desperate whimper, but it doesn't stop her from collapsing when Exetor activates her control collar.

That Sabé doesn't scream is enough to make Padmé smile, even as her best and brightest claws at the sides of the alcove and twists in a desperate attempt to escape the pain. Stronger and more hardened criminals have shrieked for lower settings than this. It is, perhaps, a perverted form of pride; but she is proud of Sabé's strength nonetheless.

_I hated seeing you hurt_. The echo of an old conversation rings in her head, Anakin's voice; words that have always come forth easily since, seeing Sabé in pain._ I hated it. It made me so angry I wanted to kill everyone in that room. Even the Emperor. But at the same time, you were... _And there had been urgent hands in her clothes, down her ribs, clutching at her sides as she gasped into his mouth.

_I was what?_ she'd breathed, reveling in her newly-earned freedom as much as the hot, eager kisses raining along her collarbone.

_Exquisite_, he'd whispered. And, looking at Sabé as she fights, _oh_. He had been right.

Finally, she raises a hand. "Thank you, Exetor. That's enough."

Sabé goes limp as the droid beeps, switching off its optics and sliding back against the wall as an innocuous black box.

Padmé stands over her for several minutes, watching as Sabé slowly stops twitching, as her breath stops coming in hitches and jumps. Silently, she holds out her hand. She can see in Sabé's eyes that she's giving serious consideration to refusing the offer; but finally, she reaches out a trembling hand and lets Padmé pull her to her feet.

Padmé slips two fingers under her collar, tugging her forward out of the alcove and sidestepping so that she ends up just at her attendant's shoulder.

"You know, Sabé," she sighs. She runs her fingers clinically along the girl's neck, checking to see that the control collar has done no physical damage; higher settings have been known to burn, and Padmé will not have her marked without permission. "You could stand to be a little more grateful."

Sabé shivers.

"I am grateful for my life, my lady," she says softly.

"Mmm." Padmé trails her fingers through Sabé's loose hair. "So grateful you barely look at me. So grateful you wince every time you're reminded of my position in the Empire. The position that saved your life."

Predictably, Sabé winces.

"So grateful you can't bear to have me touch you?" Padmé probes, running her fingers through her attendant's hair again. Sabé holds very still, and she can almost see the girl fighting against the urge to lean away. "You have nothing to be afraid of, you know."

Sabé wets her lips, eyes darting nervously around the room, alighting on everything but the woman next to her.

"Your husband..." she begins, opening with the weakest of the arguments available to her, and Padmé can't hold back a laugh. She tries to keep it small out of sympathy. It wouldn't do to be needlessly cruel.

"You're right," she says with a warm smile, tracing a fingertip down Sabé's beautiful jawline. She can almost feel the echo of the touch on her own. She's such a lovely creature. They are well suited to one another. "Lord Vader would never tolerate being made a cuckold." It's an angle they've discussed, actually. Anakin is given a great deal of freedom as the Emperor's right hand, but he's still expected to give _some_ reasoning for his kills. Whether the inappropriate attention paid to his wife is real or imagined makes little difference. She has given him blanket permission to use the excuse whenever he feels a need.

"I wouldn't want to come between..." Sabé says falteringly, and her mistress shakes her head, laughing quietly again.

"There's no fear of unfaithfulness between us," she says, framing the girl's face between her hands and stroking her thumbs over Sabé's temples. Anakin's attention has never fallen on anyone but her; she has no interest in risking that for a lesser prospect. The tender pity in her voice never wavers as she continues. "If I didn't know you so well, you would suffer just for suggesting it. There's no risk of either of our straying...but, well. You don't really count, do you?"

The mask slips again, just barely; a flash of pain and betrayal in Sabé's eyes.

Padmé tucks a loose strand of hair behind her attendant's ear. "Like touching myself in a mirror," she murmurs. "Not even a Sith's passions burn hot enough to be offended by something so petty."

Sabé's chin comes up in a moment of delicious defiance. "I am not you, my lady," she says coldly. And, oh, Anakin was right about this, too. Righteous indignation complements her features _beautifully_. She'll have to find more opportunities to indulge in it.

"No," she agrees, smiling as she chucks Sabé under the chin. The bruise at her throat is darkening already; the mark will not heal quickly. "But you're the next best thing."

Sabé doesn't reply, and Padmé takes the opportunity to let her fingertips drift down her attendant's arm as she circles her, coming to rest above her hips. Padmé stops directly behind her, holding her gently in place and closing the distance between them so she can rest her chin on Sabé's shoulder. She lips idly at the sensitive spot behind her attendant's ear.

"Don't," Sabé whispers.

Padmé raises an eyebrow and runs her hands slowly down her former handmaiden's flanks. It is, as ever, very nearly as satisfying as feeling the touch on her own skin. She doubts whether anyone but the two of them truly understands how interchangeable they really are—if only Sabé had ever possessed the vision to take the advantages offered her.

"There was a time when you would beg me not to stop," she says quietly, lips brushing Sabé's ear. "When you would promise me _anything_ as long as I kept touching you." She smiles fondly at the memories. "I remember you used to want me so shamelessly I had to tie you down to keep you under control."

Sabé trembles. "It wasn't like that," she rasps. "We loved each other, we trusted each other, it wasn't _like_ that."

Padmé slips an arm around her waist, tugs her back against her mistress. "Wasn't it?" She smiles, turning her head and breathing deeply against Sabé's hair. It's been too long since she was able to do this. "_Please, my lady_."

Sabé stiffens, shakes her head in a silent plea.

"Please," Padmé whispers, holding Sabé firmly against her, forcing her to listen to the echo of her own words from years ago. "Please, I need you, anything, anything, I'm yours, please your highness, take me, please—"

"_No_," Sabé says desperately. "It wasn't—she wasn't—_you're not her_."

Padmé releases her and she stumbles forward, whirling around with eyes wide and reckless.

"Aren't I?" says Padmé. "You sound very sure."

Sabé's eyes flash. "She was better than you!"

Padmé slaps her. Hard.

She lets the sound ring out into the sudden silence. Sabé's fingers come up instinctively to cover her burning cheek, and Padmé lets them. Her attendant is almost panting, shaking with fear and anger and desperate denial.

The mask has been forgotten. A victory, if she is clever enough to use it.

"Rudeness is unbecoming, Sabé," she says quietly. "And insults are beneath us."

Sabé doesn't move except to take a shaky breath, and Padmé's voice is gentle when she speaks again. She doesn't advance; scaring Sabé now will undo all of her hard work.

"Now," she says, commanding without being cruel. "Politely. Tell me."

Sabé stares at her for so long Padmé almost gives up on receiving an answer.

Finally, she speaks. Her voice is quiet, but more even than it has been since she arrived exhausted and bleeding from the site of her little rebel group's latest, failed skirmish.

"She was...kind," Sabé says hesitantly. "Always incredibly kind, always wise. She listened, and she always did what she knew was right. She believed in freedom. Democracy. She loved Naboo—she loved her people—more than anything else in the galaxy. She would have died for us, if the Emperor had ever given her a choice."

Padmé's eyebrows go up warningly at that, and Sabé's gaze darts to Exeter's corner for the briefest possible moment before dropping.

Just this once, she lets it go. It's not the most loyal of sentiments, perhaps, but...well, she really only cares about capturing Sabé's loyalty to _her_. It may even, eventually, be useful someday to have a devoted servant with little or no love for the Emperor.

She takes a careful step closer, and when Sabé doesn't react, another.

"You're lying to yourself," she says. She keeps her voice low, and Sabé looks up. "All of that may be true, but you're deliberately ignoring the facts."

Sabé takes half a step back. "My lady?"

Padmé's lips twitch as she advances—carefully, very carefully, letting Sabé mirror her without realizing it.

"It was never kindness and democracy making you scream." She allows herself a small smirk as her attendant jerks back again. "You weren't writhing under _freedom_, that clever tongue would be wasted on the people of Naboo, and you never begged for the privilege of using your mouth on wisdom and self-sacrifice. _Sabé_."

She knows the moment she's backed Sabé up as far as she can; there's a visible jolt through her attendant's body as the back of her knees bump against the low sofa. Padmé takes that final step, pinning her against empty air and leaving her nowhere to run, no personal space, nowhere to look but into her mistress' face.

"Sabé," she says gently. "It's _me_. You don't have to play these games with me. There's no point in being proud and silent in front of someone who knows how you sound pleading for their tongue like a cheap Twi'leki whore." She can see the miserable pain welling in Sabé's eyes and preempts her, catching her double's chin before she has a chance to look away. Without that escape, and with Padmé's fingers running along her side as a tender accompaniment to words her lady would never have said, tears threaten in the corners of her eyes.

Padmé presses a soft kiss to her lips.

"You're afraid," she says with that kind smile never wavering. "It's easier to hate the unknown than embrace change, so you try to convince yourself to do it but you're just not a hateful person." She runs her thumb over Sabé's cheek. "You're using the memory of someone who never existed except in your imagination as an excuse and you don't have to, Sabé. You really don't. You're safe here. I never abandoned _you_."

It's that slight inflection, even the faintest implication, that draws the real shock into Sabé's eyes. Padmé kisses her cheek, stays there to speak into her ear. She closes her eyes when she hears Sabé's breathing stutter.

She's very nearly won. Whatever Sabé's morals, whatever her hatred of the Empire, her body still remembers its double. Still longs to return to it. It's not a question of convincing her; Sabé knows where she belongs, where she has always belonged. It's a question of providing a path of least resistance.

"You ran," she says softly, "because you were too afraid to join your lady when she called for you. And you don't think you deserve to be forgiven. But you're wrong. There has always been a place for you here, if you can unbend your pride enough to accept it."

Sabé's chest heaves as, finally, the sob that has waited a month to tear its way free is released. She shakes as she tries to control her tears, and Padmé turns her head and kisses them gently from her cheeks.

And, yes. Here, finally, she understands why Anakin looks at her the way he does. It's intoxicating, watching Sabé crack like this without quite shattering. To see such incredible strength—intelligence, courage, beauty, and skill—contained in a single person... that would be enticing on its own. But to see its forced submission, to see it bowed before a stronger will without losing its essence, to see it surrendered willingly, stripped raw and ready to be directed, shaped, molded, _controlled_...

It takes all of her self-control not to shove Sabé backwards onto the couch and pin her down.

She could do it. Padmé has no doubts about that. She could order Sabé onto her knees or take her against any flat surface in the room and she wouldn't protest, wouldn't resist, wouldn't do anything except cling to her mistress. With the right taunts and the right encouragement, by being rough and soft in the right places, Padmé is even certain that her attendant would beg her for it. Would sob her name incoherently and thank her afterward.

But it would just as certainly break her, and Padmé does not want her broken.

She moves half a step back, takes Sabé's chin again, but only turns her head slightly to the side to press a lingering kiss to her cheek.

"You're dismissed," she says quietly. It takes several moments before Sabé seems to register the words; when she finally does, she hesitates, glances up at Padmé for confirmation of the order. She glances back several times as she leaves the room, and the door closing is almost inaudible.

Padmé will call for her again tomorrow. Sabé will be nervous, of course; and she will soothe the girl's fears with patience and a smile, take her time, let her attendant set the pace at first. And then, there will be no more resistance. Then she will take her lovely blank canvas, and start to give it shape.


End file.
